This month’s feature highlighting arts, entertainment and culture not to be missed in MSP focuses on innovation, startups and artistic initiatives that will scare, inspire and spice up your life.

 
Heat Up Your Life
Saturday, October 3, 3-10 p.m.
Brent BrewStillery, St. Paul
Free
 
While autumn conjures all manner of pumpkin-spice this and that, Heat Up Your Life celebrates local food that packs a bigger punch. We may have a reputation for milder dishes, but we also harbor communities of fiery food enthusiasts. Local salsa, hot sauce and spicy kraut will be provided by Twin Cities’ purveyors. A peek at the vendor list really provides all you need to know: DoubleTake Salsa, Fierce Ferments, Hellraising, Isabel Street Heat and Nuclear Nectar among them. Bent Brewstillery provides the palette cleansers in the form of spice-infused ales and cocktails, along with Prohibition Kombucha’s fire-centric all natural beverage. Sponsored by Fuzzology Inc., Heat Up Your Life celebrates our “fiery foods community” as they put it. Live performances are also on tap. In addition to “chili-inspired music,” the always-electric Eclectic Edge Ensemble will dance its way into your heart.
 
 
2015 Kickstarter Film Festival
Thursday, October 15, 7 p.m. and 9:20 p.m.
St. Anthony Main Theatre, Minneapolis
Free, but rsvp required
 
In 2009, a small company called Kickstarter was launched as a way to help finance artistic, philanthropic and entrepreneurial projects. By 2010, it was already considered one of the best inventions of the year by Time. Kickstarter has also been the launching pad for independent film projects, completely revolutionizing the idea of crowd-funded campaigns. Kickstarter’s largest film festival to date happens this year in 32 theaters across the U.S., showing internationally recognized films all made possible by a Kickstarter campaign. The historic St. Anthony Main Theatre hosts this one-night-only event in Minneapolis. To organize the Kickstarter Film Festival, curators reviewed thousands of films ranging from documentaries to shorts to animation. Five films made the cut, many of them Sundance Film Festival favorites.
 
The Soap Factory’s Haunted Basement
Through November 1, 7 p.m.
The Soap Factory, Minneapolis
$25
 
Nine years ago, The Soap Factory began terrifying Twin Citians with its Haunted Basement; an annual fright night that everyone should experience at least once. Produced and curated by local artist (and recent Ivey Award Winner) Noah Bremer, the production utilizes the crème de la crème of visual and performing artists who set up horrifying vignettes in the dark doldrums of Soap’s 13,000-square-foot industrial basement. 
 
Upon arrival, guests enter the space in groups of two to four. They’re given the choice to follow a yellow light (toward a more tame experience) or brave the horrific uncertainty of following the infamous red lights. Both journeys offer an equally frightening experience, but the signs have a tricky way of changing at any given moment. Once guests chose a path, there’s no turning back from this living, breathing “American Horror Story” experience. And it’s no joke. Guests are required to sign a waiver, no one under 18 is allowed and there’s even a safe word in case things go too far. 
 
Nordeast Big River Brew Fest
Saturday, October 10, 1-4 p.m.
Eastside Neighborhood Services, Minneapolis
$25-$30
 
The fifth annual Nordeast Big River Brew Fest, sponsored by East Side Neighborhood Services, doesn’t only celebrate MSP’s bourgeoning microbrewery scene. Also on “tap,” so to speak, will be local cider, harder stuff from local distilleries, and great food from the likes of Chowgirls Killer Catering, Surdyk’s and Red Table Meats. Play Hammerschlagen (German for hammer striking), enjoy live music, or enter beard and mustache competitions. All proceeds go to East Side Neighborhood Services, a nonprofit that for 99 years has been improving life for residents of Northeast and Southeast Minneapolis with school readiness, literacy, parenting, mental health and employment programs.   
 
Artability Art Show and Sale
Friday and Saturday, October 23-24
Great Hall, St. Paul
Free
 
People Incorporated helps break the stigma associated with mental illness with its annual Artability Art Show and Sale in the fabulous Art Deco Great Hall in Lowertown. The show, which celebrates the creative contributions of community members with a mental illness, provides a platform from which the artists can be heard. Eighty percent of sales go to the artists, while the other 20 percent goes toward growing the organization’s programs. People Incorporated serves close to 8,000 people living with mental illness via 60 programs (many of them art-related). Artability’s atmosphere is one of inclusion and acceptance, and promotes dialogue on an issue typically swept under the rug. This year Artability features the work of more than 100 artists, including writers and poets who have contributed to an anthology on sale during the event.
 
David Rue is a dance artist and writer infatuated with the companionship of arts and academia.